What's the future of Disch-Falk Field?
Opened ahead of the 1975 national championship season, UFCU Disch-Falk Field has been the storied home for Texas Longhorns baseball for almost 50 years. The one-of-a-kind facility was updated, upgraded, and expanded ahead of the 2008 season with new luxury suites and other amenities added to the facility just east of IH-35 on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
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Texas has hosted five regionals since the renovation, with four teams participating in the NCAA Tournament in Austin during the 2022 season. The current capacity is officially 7,373 but the Longhorns have boasted several crowds of 8,300+ since the renovation, most notably a college baseball record crowd of 8,502 for the facility in a NCAA Regional game versus Louisiana Tech on June 4, 2022.
With the upcoming move to the SEC, where seven programs play in ballparks with capacities of over 7,000, Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte was asked Monday if there were plans to renovate Disch-Falk Field, whether via additional seating or other upgrades.
Del Conte cited a City of Austin issue as one of the roadblocks to expanded seating, specifically in the outfield.
“The problem is, we can’t put any seats on the outfield on either side because we don’t own those roads,” Del Conte said Monday.
However, other improvements, including the laying of a natural grass playing surface — one that has never been seen at the Disch — are on the table for the Texas athletic department.
“The idea of moving to grass at all of our venues, we’ll get there sooner than later,” Del Conte said.
That may take a couple of years. Though in favor of a natural playing surface, Del Conte mentioned a desire to get the most out of a synthetic playing surface laid down prior to his arrival from TCU.
Closer to becoming reality for the Longhorn athletic department is plans to upgrade the non-functional scoreboard just beyond the right-center field fence.
“New video board will be installed next year,” Del Conte said. “We’d love to have done it this year, but ordering equipment to now — we talked about COVID — but we are still so far delayed with equipment and it’s been really problematic. Even if you look at Daktronics, who’s an American company, just trying to get parts from all over the world has been really, really difficult.
“We’re going to still stay with our current setup for this year, but you can see the new scoreboard going forward will be greatly expanded.”
Del Conte said Monday that Texas baseball sold out of its season ticket allotment this year following the program’s back-to-back visits to the College World Series. There are ways to still get into the Disch, but demand has made good seats tough to come by.
“We’ll have about 2,000 standing room only tickets,” Del Conte said.
The Longhorn baseball program isn’t in dire need of facility upgrades. The program unveiled the J. Dan Brown Family Player Development Center in October of 2019. The facility was fully donor-funded, and features a weight room, pitching lab, nutrition center, batting cages, and an alumni locker room.
However, ahead of the move to the SEC where baseball is seen as more than just an offseason time-waster, Del Conte understands how important having the best facilities to practice and play in is to the program.
Could that include additional seating elsewhere? Del Conte mentioned that as a possibility. The potential location for any added seats, per the UT athletic director, was down the third-base line. That’s the only place where he saw enough room for added seats.
That said, the condition of the Disch has not been forgotten by the Texas athletic director. Texas will look to have one of the top baseball facilities in all of the NCAA, but it might do so at its own pace ahead of the upcoming move to the SEC.
